Get Etherial With This Thick Evolving Pad In FM8

FM8 has a soft side! This tutorial will show you how to make a thick evolving pad in FM8 that’s great for dubstep, house and ambient genres.

I’m a pad junky. I love them. I love them because they help fill out mixes and I like making pads in FM8 because they just sound different from all of my other software synthesizers.

Making a great pad in FM8 isn’t as hard as it sounds. FM synthesis is a pretty powerful platform for thick sounds and when you combine that with the flexibility of FM8, it becomes pretty easy. There are a few tips you will want to remember when you are attempting to make a pad in FM8.

Using the reverb and chorus/delay effects will really help make your sound less “digital”. FM synthesis can sound fairly bright and digital, but using the bright and treble knobs in FM8’s reverb can help un-digitize the sound if used correctly.

FM8 has some of the most flexible envelopes I’ve ever seen in a soft synth. This automatically lends itself to designing great pad sounds. Couple that with the amount of operators at your disposal (a total of 6) you can really dial in what operator does what when. I always like programming subtle differences in the envelopes to create a more analog feel and to create movement as the sound progresses.